MIMOSAS ***

It is said by some that "Mimosas" is a 'contemporary Moroccan western' and why not. Over the decades we have come to learn that the Western is as much a state of mind as it is a genre and that it is not rooted in any particular time or place. The Western tropes apparent in "Mimosas" are a journey on horseback through mountainous terrain, in this case by three men tasked with taking the body of a dead sheikh to his place of burial, (Tommy Lee Jones covered similar territory in the much more traditional "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"), together with a few gun attacks and a couple of killings. Indeed, were it not for an early sequence in a city or town involving a fleet of taxis we might be back two centuries and, if not in the American West, at least in recognisable 'Western' terrain and in one scene near the end of the film we could even be back 2,000 years.

In some respects you could say not a great deal happens, at least not conventionally, in Oliver Laxe's film, (it's only his second), and yet this is so much more than a beautifully photographed travelogue, (Laxe shot the film on location mostly in the Atlas mountains). There is an almost profound sense of both joy and sadness in the relationship that develops between the three men and their strange cargo as well as genuine sense of mystery, (many events are left unexplained). Laxe also gets wonderful performances from Ahmed Hammoud as the man who agrees to take the body in the first place and from Shakib Ben Omar as the little runt who proves to have a lot more going for him than meets the eye, (neither men are professional actors though Shakib did appear in Laxe's first film). There are also scenes here of such pure physicality that they almost rival those in "Aguirre, Wrath of God". I have yet to see Laxe's earlier "You are all Captains" but "Mimosas" certainly heralds the arrival of a major player in world cinema.